[Many thanks to David Lewis for bringing this item to our attention.] Gloria González, Deputy Vitality Editor at POLITICO Professional., reviews on Puerto Rico’s energy grid and the upcoming hurricane season. Listed here are excerpts; for full article, see POLITICO.
[. . .] These of us who love baseball additionally received to get pleasure from an exhilarating World Baseball Basic. And though Puerto Rico fell in need of the title, the staff’s run to the quarterfinals was a supply of immense delight — and a short lived distraction from very actual challenges on the territory, together with the fragility of the facility grid.
The grid survived the winter months with no main disruptions after Hurricane Fiona knocked out electrical energy throughout Puerto Rico final yr. Within the six months since Fiona hit, an intense effort has been underway to shore up the facility grid towards outages and speed up the territory’s transition to renewable vitality.
However fears persist that Puerto Rico’s energy system is not going to be prepared for the approaching hurricane season and that its 3.3 million inhabitants will as soon as once more face life-or-death conditions from devastating blackouts.
Vitality Secretary Jennifer Granholm, whom President Joe Biden tapped final yr to guide the federal authorities’s efforts to modernize the grid, is aware of it is a very actual threat.
You’ll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identification are the DNA of American politics and coverage. “Will the grid be completely prepared for the following hurricane season? In all candor, it is not going to,” Granholm instructed POLITICO. “However, will it’s higher than it was final time? Will there be a faster response than there was final time? That’s precisely what we’re all striving for, that folks is not going to be with out energy for months.”
Years of underinvestment and poor upkeep have left the grid weak to climate disasters, which incessantly trigger blackouts. However in 2017, Hurricane Maria triggered unprecedented destruction when it roared ashore, killing nearly 3,000 individuals and plunging components of the territory into blackouts that lasted practically a yr.
And final September, Fiona left 1000’s of residents within the southern and southwestern areas with out energy for 12 days whereas different components of the territory skilled intermittent outages.
However even when the facility grid stays intact, Puerto Ricans residing on the island will seemingly face one other drawback: rising electrical energy payments. That’s as a result of a federal decide is weighing a proposed plan to finish the government-owned utility’s chapter — though they already pay extra on common for electrical energy than any U.S. state aside from Hawaii.
Ruth Santiago, an environmental lawyer in Puerto Rico and a member of a coalition named Queremos Sol — We Need Photo voltaic — fears that the anticipated worth hikes for unreliable electrical energy in Puerto Rico will proceed to propel Puerto Ricans out of the territory.
In 2018, the yr after Maria, the variety of residents shifting to the mainland United States rose by 37 % from the prior yr.
“It’s going to maintain pushing individuals out of Puerto Rico,” Santiago mentioned. [. . .]
Robert Mujica, government director of the Monetary Oversight and Administration Board for Puerto Rico — the federal entity overseeing the territory’s funds, generally generally known as La Junta — mentioned the frustration Puerto Ricans have over rising energy payments is comprehensible.
However Mujica, who was beforehand the longtime funds director for former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, mentioned affordability was a “critically vital” issue within the board’s plan. It could dramatically reduce prices by decreasing the utility’s debt, he mentioned, and finish the chapter whereas defending the lowest-income individuals from escalating energy payments. [. . .]
For full article, see https://www.politico.com/newsletters/the-recast/2023/03/28/puerto-rico-power-grid-hurricane-season-00087396
[Photo above by Jose Jimenez/Getty Images. Members of a brigade of the company LUMA work restoring energy in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona on Sept. 20, 2022, in San Juan.]